Welcome. This is a quick explanation of the unconstitutional property taxes in Corrales New Mexico.
The complete data is here
The complete legal argument is here
November 7 2024 - Another win. The Sandoval County Ethics Board has agreed to investigate our complaint that the assessor and her employees violated the law when they produced a total of 3 different valuations for our property and lied about it under oath. The next step in this will be an evidentiary hearing where the board can consider the evidence in detail. This was in spite of telling us we could only talk for 5 minutes and then letting the assessor's lawyer talk for nearly 20 minutes.
September 26 2024 - This just in - We WON! A non-lawyer beat the Assessor's FIVE no-good bum lawyers.
The 13th district court judge has ruled on our case. The entire opinion is here .
To summarize the judge's opinion she states "Here, based on the evidence of the variability of the properties in Corrales and the differences between the properties in the north of Corrales and the properties in the south, the board in effect concluded that the assessor failed to comply with the first requirement, in that she did not appropriately define the universe of similar properties. Instead of looking only at those properties in a similar location in the north of Corrales with similar amenities, the assessor included sales of properties in the south of Corrales, which were more desirable and more valuable for a number of reasons. Accordingly, the requirements of the mass appraisal technique as approved under New Mexico law were not met. The board found that the evidence at the hearing demonstrated that the DeHoffs' property should not be valued the same as those in the southern part of the village. That decision was supported by substantial evidence."
My plain language interpretation: The assessor violated state law by ignoring significant property characteristics like actual market sales values, which led to every property she uses this method against (all of us) having an identical valuation.
In 2022, the year this argument was initiated, Land sales east of Loma Larga ranged in price from 172k/acre to 323k/acre. Instead of valuing these properties based on their market value the assessor applied a community wide assessment - everyone is paying 204k/acre. A person bought a lot around east ella in 2022 for $295k/acre and that lot is still valued in 2024 for taxation at $204k/acre - saving that person from paying tax on $91k/acre every year from now own. And across Corrales Road in that same area another lot, sold for $323k/acre is still valued at $204k/acre, a 119k/acre discount that owner never has to pay taxes on - EVER. Wouldn't we all like that deal! 204k/acre is applied to all vacant land and recently sold residential properties. The chart below shows actual data from 2022 and the 3 values comp1, comp2, comp3 are the assessor's own data. By guaranteeing a steep discount to the most valuable property sales in the community, this regressive tax shifts the burden of taxation to the less valuable properties - a violation of our constitution.
